I have been working on a tentative schedule for the actual cooking day to try and keep us as organized as possible. This is going to look different for everyone, but hopefully my schedule is a good jumping off point for you.

You can never be too organized or plan too much for a cooking day like this. The more you can get prepped and ready before you start, the better off you will be.

The day before

Double check your ingredient list and make sure you aren’t missing anything. You don’t want to be running out at the last minute, you will be busy enough as it is.

Make sure you have enough aluminum pans, if you are following my plan exactly you will need two. You can either print out labels for your lids or foil that are going on top of your pans or write directly on the foil with a Sharpie. You will also need approximately eight gallon freezer bags plus about 6 quart freezer bags, print out labels for these or write cooking directions with a Sharpie directly on the bag. I use sandwich bags for the Pizza Sauce and Cilantro Lime Pesto.

Make sure all of your meat is defrosted and in the fridge ready to go.

Make sure you have something planned for dinner after all your cooking. Use one of your freezer meals to keep it simple or plan to have a pizza delivered. I can guarantee that you won’t want to cook anything elaborate that evening.

We’re going to bake our chicken, so we aren’t tying up a burner and we can just toss it in the stove and forget about it until it’s done. Once the chicken is done and cooled slightly, cube and set aside.

While chicken is cooking, assemble all ingredients for Pizza Sauce on stove top and let simmer.

Saute onion and carrot for White Chicken Chili, add remaining ingredients per the recipe and let simmer while you are getting everything else ready.

Mix all ingredients for Pizza Dough and let rest

Make Cilantro Lime Pesto

At this point, you should have everything prepped and ready to assemble. Feel free to assemble your recipes in whatever order you like, this is just how we will be doing it to keep it simple.

Once Crockpot Cream Cheese Chicken is done and cooled, place in prepared bags

I tried to include every step of the process, but I may have missed something small so please double-check your recipes. Truthfully, it was a lot of work to wrap my brain around this kind of planning. Doing the steps in this order is what makes sense to me, but you may have a different idea of what will run smoothly for you and your kitchen layout.

Sarah and I went through our ingredient list and actually had most of the things we needed in our two pantries. We will just pick up a few additional ingredients at Walmart, including the few produce items we need. For a few of the larger items (sour cream, cream cheese), I am going to buy those at Costco and we will just split what is leftover.

Are you ready for this? I’m so excited to be cooking with all of you! When is your cooking day planned?

I have included all the Freezer Cooking Day posts on the sidebar of the blog for easy navigation. You can find them under the Freeezer Cooking header, next to the Amazon Diaper Deals banner.

Welcome to This Beautiful Frugal Life!

Hi! I'm Melody from Tri-Cities, WA, the mother of two young boys and passionate about getting fit, eating healthy and saving money. I am dedicated to helping you live a fabulous life for less and hope you will join me on this journey!